A selection of incredible portraits from photographer Charles Fréger’s collection and book Wilder Mann, documenting the ancient pagan rites still being practiced throughout Europe today.
From the New York Times Lens blog:
About 10,000 years ago, humans began domesticating wild animals for both food and companionship. Over the course of centuries, animal species were bred for traits that made them docile and more useful to their masters. But as humans changed and fenced in animals, they were also domesticating themselves. The skills needed to survive in the wild were different than those needed to succeed in more complex social arrangements.
Mr Fréger was intrigued by the transformations of human being to beast that he witnessed in 18 European countries. They were, he said, celebrations of fertility, life and death and symbolized the complicated relationship between mankind and nature.
So this is pretty mind-blowing. Watch as J.Viewz turns vegetables into an organic MPC sampler and proceeds to play a glitched-out version of Massive Attack’s Teardrop. Wild stuff.
Well this is some kind of perfection. Nice work Matthew Frost.
Following up on his GIF-as-music-video debut for Kirin J Callinan, Kris Moyes has stepped it up a notch with this beautiful and creepy piece for Grizzly Bear’s ‘Gun Shy’. Nice.
I recently started a photo diary tumblr type thing, where I exclusively post my own photos like the one above. If that sounds like the kind of thing you could be into, you can check it out at the super-tricky url dimitritakespictures.tumblr.com.
Some incredible black and white images from photographer Hengki Koentjoro of mist, palm trees and other assorted tropical goodness. Check his flickr photostream out for more.
Today would have been Hunter S. Thompson’s 75th birthday. Happy birthday HST and RIP.
Music video genius. That’s all.
WOWOWOWOWOWOW. This looks brilliant. Beasts Of The Southern Wild won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and also made the official selection at Cannes. Not a bad effort for Writer/Director Benh Zeitlin’s feature debut.
For a little Q&A with the director, check this link https://vimeo.com/45289928.
Here’s a video I co-directed with Chris Cork for Melbourne artist Elliott Spencer’s debut track ‘The World Is Empty’. It gets a little weird.
Some new work for Reform, check out the full series of images here.
From Time Video, this super-interesting piece on Narcocorridos (songs created to glorify the violent exploits of drug barons in Mexico) provides an interesting insight into how cartel folklore has rapidly infiltrated popular culture in Mexico and beyond, more often than not in the form of music and films commissioned by the cartels themselves. The extent of the anarchy in towns like Juarez is particularly interesting, where cartels broadcast narcocorridos over police radio frequencies to announce when successful hits have gone down. Crazy stuff.
More short film than music video, this incredible clip from AG Rojas for Spiritualized’s track ‘Hey Jane’, tells the story of a transgender hooker and the brutal descent of her day. It seems like a powerful narrative is becoming a more essential element in music videos than ever before. I’m digging this trend heaps.
Jake Gyllenhaal executes a bunch of partying folk in the Daniel Wolfe directed video for The Shoes’ “Time To Dance”. It’s a blast!
Photographer Dana Lixenberg’s career has spanned well over two decades, with a distinct style that seamlessly swings from reportage to portraiture, and subjects that range from celebrities, all the way through to ‘individuals and communities on the margins of society’ around the world. Despite the discrepancies in the lifestyles of her subjects, her images are universally compelling and beautiful. Check out her extensive body of work at danalixenberg.com.
